Stablizing the market(stop undercutting everyone people!)

[TheVedis]

this was my point earlier in the thread when i responded to someone who said you aren't suppose to profit from crafting or something like that,lol.

if your grinding maybe your not supposed to profit but my whole point is this isnt about grinding, its about making stuff in general

and when this situation continues to get worse, itl get to the point where if you dont have a crafter to make the gear fot you, or you are not one yourself, the gear will be imposible to get since no one will be making it any more since you cant make money off it.


it is the equivilent to there being nothing to do at level 50 for combat, you take away the reason to do it and whats left

[Bowen]

Fine.
/ignore me D:

[Geesus]

using your example in the current issue

player a who farms his own mats is dumb for making the item to sell, he coulda sold the mats for 60k, but he chose to make the item and thus his effort becomes 30k

while player b who bought all the mats, can only sell it if he takes a massive loss, thus making it not worth doing it at all, its imposible for him to profit in the given situation no matter what he does

this was my point earlier in the thread when i responded to someone who said you aren't suppose to profit from crafting or something like that,lol.

But Vedis it's not the game/community's issue that 1 can do and 1 cannot do.

Ok let's take a step back... why do you craft? For gil? For XP? Why?
To answer myself, I do it for gil tbh. The XP is a bonus and fortunately or unfortunately depending how you look at it, what I "need" in order to make better items for more gil.

If someone is unwilling to take the time to gather their own mats to craft then so be it but you can't shouldn't say that they should not be "punished" in a way because they don't want to do what hardcore crafters/gathers do.

It's a game and I don't mean XIV I mean markets whether real or not. Play it or you lose out. It may seem unfair and it's happened plenty to me. I either just say screw it and NPC it OR I might stay logged in selling from my bazaar.

[TheVedis]

But Vedis it's not the game/community's issue that 1 can do and 1 cannot do.

Ok let's take a step back... why do you craft? For gil? For XP? Why?
To answer myself, I do it for gil tbh. The XP is a bonus and fortunately or unfortunately depending how you look at it, what I "need" in order to make better items for more gil.

If someone is unwilling to take the time to gather their own mats to craft then so be it but you can't shouldn't say that they should not be "punished" in a way because they don't want to do what hardcore crafters/gathers do.

It's a game and I don't mean XIV I mean markets whether real or not. Play it or you lose out. It may seem unfair and it's happened plenty to me. I either just say screw it and NPC it OR I might stay logged in selling from my bazaar.

i dont think you are understanding this at all

people who do not gather their own mats are not being punished
crafters in general are being punished by the way they are acting
again, if you gather your own materials, and craft them into something else, you make LESS money then if you sold what you farmed, making crafting for any kind of profit utterly imposible, it has nothing to do with buying the material;s(you just use the material prices as the baseline for comparison)


it IS a community problem, its the community itself choosing to do this to themselves at this point

[Asiaine]

Hello,

New to crafting here, but have done a lot of crafting in FFXI (if that helps).

I sympathize with the hardship that crafters can have in crafting items. And I too find it a bit amusing that raw materials sell for so much more than a final product.

But I think the reality is that we need to shift our expectations of what sells and does not sell to not match our pre-conceived notions, but rather, face 'reality' as it is in Eorzea.

Raw Materia A sells for more than Finished Product A

This is a reality, so do not go in expecting to turn a profit by crafting the raw material into a product. It may be nice that you could do it, but if no one wants it, what is the point?

I could go to the store and buy Truffles, and Caviar, and HP Sauce. All nice on their own, but if I mix them together and put them between two pieces of bread, I would be unlikely to sell it for a profit.

The sad/funny reality is that in Eorzea, raw materials are worth more than most things they could be turned into. Once we accept this then it is 'merely' a matter of finding something (anything) that sells for more than cost of goods.

As a big eared friend of mine would say: There is profit to be made out there. You just have to find it.

[Yves]

Also that demand for finished items is incredibly low. By now most people who are still playing have multiple crafts to 50 (or at least friends who do.) This means they can get free gear. So the option is likely to price however you wish and make no money or price low enough to entice window shoppers who will spend a couple of bucks if the price is right while eating a potential loss. Cobalt armor? I can't think of a single finished item that people don't have immediate access to.

I know that you are saying this is a community issue but think about it: more than half of the players on Besaid are launch players - most shells are self-sufficient. If anything, the fact that the materials are selling may be an indicator that people are leveling missing crafts (honestly, there isn't much left to do now.) This may be more of a problem of the game itself (as it stands today) than the community. I can't blame the community for not buying stuff they don't need.

Random sidenote: I actually will sometimes impulse buy just to save a few minutes but the price has to be good to warrant it.

[Kinseykinz]

While I agree with the 'dude, why all the undercutting?' ideals here's a couple reasons I know it's happening.

1. People don't like farming/gathering mats...and/or they don't have the time.
In my quest to earn my golden hatchet (just knocked out grade 5 Black Shroud today ), I obtained stacks of one item I didn't even realize sold for close to 10K each on my server. They are SUPER easy to get...yet no one takes the time to farm them. But let me note: in order for me to go back and gather this item, I have to NOT work on my tool achievement/gain exp. So a lot of people just simply don't gather at that grade anymore. This is why items from that node sell for good money. (on my server)

2. People who are exping/grinding for golden tools in crafting who undercut to sell quick to minimize their losses.
The trick for other crafters is to NOT sell the grind stuff. Let the people leveling up sell it.

3. Craft/sell in small batches...or at least sell in small batches.
My main craft is cul...you can stop giggling now. And I DO cook food to sell...seriously, stop laughing :P. Anyway, with CUL you get forced into buying mats from NPC's at times/farming your own stuff/begging ls mates for stuff. But it hasn't been hard for me to profit as CUL (partially because there are very few actively crafting) but also because I craft small batches, with mats I have and don't overkill the market. The majority of the gil I have came from CUL profits. So it is possible.

- Another example of small batch crafting.
Now I'm leveling Woodworking. I still find selling in small batches (2-4 stacks/items) at a time, works best. Lets face it, if there are even 10 rank 50 Weavers on your server all making Woolen Bliauds, and they each fill both retainers full of bliauds to sell... that's at least 80 on the market. Of Course undercutting and price dropping is going to happen... it's just a supply/demand thing. If however, each weaver limited themselves to selling 1-2 at a time, well that drops it from 80ish to closer to 10-20ish.

4. As a rank 50 Craftsman, check the wards for items that are missing that you can craft cheaply and sell.
Be flexible, you'll make money. Even if that means selling rank 20 gear for a smaller, but steady profit stream. (I'm only a rank 31 Woodworker and I can consistantly sell several items I exp on for MORE than market value on my server). But that's because the rank 50 woodworkers don't think to craft rank 30ish items on my server.

[JakeRoon]

STOP Selling STuff for a price you can get ppl to buy it from you for, BECAUSE I want ppl to buy it from me at a HIGHER price....

Geeze ppl can't you get this through your thivk skulls...it's all about ME, screw free market I needs mah gils!

[Mychael]

STOP Selling STuff for a price you can get ppl to buy it from you for, BECAUSE I want ppl to buy it from me at a HIGHER price....

Geeze ppl can't you get this through your thivk skulls...it's all about ME, screw free market I needs mah gils!

Umadbro?

"Free market" is a system where prices are determined by supply and demand.

Not because Herp Derp doesn't want to wait his turn and tries to jump the list. In real life, this would be a "discount." The price would more-or-less remain the same after Herp Derp sold his 5 stacks of interwebz. One of the problems is that no one lets it return. Herp sells his for 1k cheaper. Derp sells his for 2k cheaper. So on, and only a few people are brave enough to say, "No way, this item is worth way more than that!" Even so, they can't stop other people. This isn't real money, so people are much more willing to toss it away if it means they get it faster. Seriously, if you can drive to the other side of a city (say, 45 minutes...) to get to a store where you notice the camera you want is $200 instead of $230... would you do it? Most people would, because that ~13% makes a big difference. Time is money, but there are limits on that. Besides, you personally don't dedicate any more/less time to making more by not undercutting; you can just buy moar thingz fastar.

The next problem is that, instead of cutting the price by 5-15%, people are undercutting by as much as 40% sometimes.

A lot of problems come from the fact that there is unlimited harvesting. In real life, veins of ore run out, forests become deforested, and fish eventually become extinct if over-harvested. There are inherent costs in logging/mining/fishing in real life; transportation (preservation, in the case of fish), upkeep of tools (no, 500 gil for a blacksmith to repair your tool doesn't make up for it), etc. You can only carry so much wood at a time--even if it's a wagon full, I seriously doubt that you can fit 10 stacks of logs in a wagon, given that 10 stacks means 990 logs. That's one hell of a wagon. I wish there were limits on how much someone could farm, but that would be a damper to people trying to level DoLs, and I don't want to see the fatigue system again. :/

The next problem is that there is little/no use for lower-level gear these days. It would be possible for SE to include higher-level recipes that use lower-level finished products as ingredients, as with the [item=4070308]Crab Bow[/item]. Because of this, [item=4070307]Oak Composite Bow[/item]s retain value despite being obsolete as equipment.

Another problem is the _______ of the Luminary system. In a real world, people would only gather as much lumber/ore/etc. as they could possibly sell; in-game and real life alike, there is no "use" for raw materials outside of crafting, which makes a product that people need. However, by making a goal of gathering absurdly high numbers of raw materials, SE has caused a huge influx that should never have happened (in addition to the already unrealistic surplus that comes from leveling DoLs). The price of raw materials gathered stays somewhat higher despite this because they can be used for other Luminary items. However, that can't be said for the DoH tools, because there is nowhere for those finished products to go.

A partial fix would be to make finished products recyclable. [Finished Oak Product]->Wind Crystal = Pile of Oak Chips. These [item=10008501]Oak Chips[/item] already exist, and have some uses in tanning and smoking foods. Expand that; make them necessary for blacksmithing and goldsmithing, to stoke the fire. +1 chips could be yet another way to increase HQ rate. Make iron products desynth into scrap metal, and give it some use across other fields. Items produced by goldsmiths could be put into a mortar/pestle to create reagents (ground crystals, gold shavings) for Alchemists. Food could be converted into bait for fishing, and potions into something else, but part of Cul/Alc's nature is that their items are consumable, so they won't have the same magnitude of surplus that other DoHs face.

The largest problem is the lack of necessity for items. There's no feasible way to guarantee that there will always be players of the right levels, jobs, and facing the appropriate situations to use items; and I highly doubt SE will be willing to try another cap (fatigue ftl) on the number of items that can be harvested as it provided a huge barrier (necessary, imo, but I digress) to the leveling of DoLs, it seems to me like the best way would be to make uses for the potentially useless items.

Why the "£$¬%^&* did I wrote so much?

tl;dr: A lot of problems with the economy in my eyes. I think there should be a cap on how much of an item can be gathered, but that prevents DoLs from leveling so it can't happen. My idea: make uses for finished products that involve converting them into materials for other Disciplines, or using the finished product in a new recipe.

[Asiaine]

Maybe it can be put like this:
Source of the problem: Unlimited Free Natural Resources (not including cost of time spent).
Solution: Limit the amount of natural resources available

Side-Effect: How to obtain the resources?
A whole new mechanism for obtaining resources will need to be implemented. Perhaps a 'license' model where everyone can buy a license (ala leve) to obtain permission to gather resources. If the only method of getting raw materials was through levequests, then there would be a limit (due to # of leves granted per day) on resource intake. This can give SE a way to manage the economy through this.

Side-effect: How to level
A whole new model on levelling will have to be done. If levelling (granted by XP) can be balanced so it is possible to do it via levequests and job specific quests at a comprable rate, then it removes the need to excessively gather.

Side-effect: Getting those achievements
The requirements for achievements could be adjusted to reflect the new model (this really should be the most minor point, as achievements SHOULD be a little nice something, but not a game-balance affecting something).



This will then result in a lack of excessive input into the economy of natural resources. For example, I gathered 15 STACKS of wood as I was doing Botany. Most of which is not needed (I levelled up Carpentry and did not need at least 10 stacks of wood). Therefore that excess 10 stacks is taking up space (and could be money to help me fund something else). Therefore selling it at 50% off is better than me being poor or it taking up space (note: not doing that, as I hope the price goes back to normal, but it's a possibility).

If the input can be restricted/controlled, then everything that builds upon that can also be managed, allowing for a more predictable (and sane) economy.

Thank you.